ABOUT HIJAU is GREEN

"Hijau" is a Malay word which means "green". This blog entitled HIJAU is GREEN is an outlet for me to post articles and opinions on issues affecting development, the environment, education, labour and society. My name is Faezah Ismail and I am a journalist from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Email me at surveypeopleplaces @ gmail.com

Malaysia has taken steps to further ensure that children and young persons who enter the job market are safe from abuses. FAEZAH ISMAIL reports on the move to modify the Children and Young Persons (Employment) Act 1966.

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Student Fayarika Yarman has the makings of a first-rate entrepreneur.

She smiles easily and interacts well with customers who visit her father’s stall — which offers colourful scarves, shawls and headgear for the fashion-conscious Muslim women — at the Jelatek night market which is close to the city centre in Kuala Lumpur.

At first glance Fayarika, 16, looks like the booth owner.

You know she is not when her father returns to the accessories stand with soft drinks for her and younger brother Muhd Faiz, 11, who also attends to customers.

Both teenagers love school — Fayarika is in Form Four while Muhd Faiz is in Year 5 — and they only help with sales at the weekend and on school holidays.

Under Malaysia’s Children and Young Persons (Employment) Act 1966 (CYP Act) the siblings are not committing an offence.

Indeed, the law allows children and young persons to do “light work” in family enterprises and licensed public entertainment establishments besides engaging in approved internships and apprenticeships and government-sponsored work.

The CYP Act, which only applies to the states of Peninsular Malaysia, also specifies the number and duration of working days and claims to protect children and young persons from the so-called 3D — “dangerous, difficult and dirty” — jobs.

The East Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak have similar Acts.

Malaysia has taken steps to further ensure that children and young persons who enter the job market are safe from abuses.

Parliament recently passed the Bill of the Children and Young Persons (Employment) (Amendment) Act 2010 which seeks to modify the current legislation.

The changes also include “a new definition of light work” and a prohibition against employing children and young persons to carry out “hazardous work”.

“Light work” means “any work performed by a worker” which entails “moderate movement of the arm, leg and trunk (while sitting) and “mostly moderate movement of the arm (while standing)”.

The revision attempts to clarify the current description which reads “employment involving light work suitable to his capacity” in any family commercial undertaking.

“Hazardous work” — which means any work that has been assessed as such “by a competent authority on safety and health determined by the Minister” — will be out of the question for children and young persons when amendments to the CYP Act take effect.

Why amend the CYP Act now, 13 years after Malaysia signed Convention 138?

“Our education is free. Children should be in school, however poor the family,” says Rajasekaran.

“We have an issue with the amendments,” says Malaysian Employers Federation executive director Shamsuddin Bardan, who is particularly upset that the legal working age of young persons will be 18 instead of 16.

Some 107,000 SPM school-leavers will join the labour force as unskilled workers such as production hands, shop assistants and cleaners.

The rest will continue their education at tertiary institutions or at skills training programmes organised by the government.

What does the future hold for those who are not allowed to work when the reforms become law?

Shamsuddin fears that they “will become a burden to society” and urges the government “to take care of this group of SPM school-leavers”.

Does Malaysia have the infrastructure necessary to deal with this?

Shamsuddin suggests mandatory skills training for this cohort but admits that it may be difficult to implement.

Would the youngsters be interested in the idea? And would education providers be able to absorb this influx of learners?

The potential dilemma identified by Shamsuddin is like the current jobless graduates problem.

Government agencies have designed diverse projects which hope to reskill thousands of unemployed graduates.

Some 47,000 young workers are registered with the government and they are mostly found in family owned concerns.

Rajasekaran reveals that “there are 70,000 working children in Malaysia including those who help their parents after school to manage makeshift stalls at the side of roads and at night markets”.

Labour Department officials refute the figure, which Rajasekaran says came from the Human Resources Ministry, and insist that their records of the last 10 years do not show complaints about employers who exploit child workers in Peninsular Malaysia.

“The condition in Sarawak is similar to that of the peninsula but Sabah is another story where huge numbers of undocumented workers complicate the issue.”

Not all economic activity performed by children is necessarily bad, says National Union of Plantation Workers national executive secretary A. Navamukundan.

Fayarika, who wants to venture into business, and Muhd Faiz, who dreams of being an astronaut, agree.

Working at the night market allows them to acquire skills — such as numeracy and enhancing English proficiency when they serve foreigners — which will stand them in good stead when it comes to finding jobs in the future.